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Meet Phoebe
Phoebe Ng is the Head of Marketing at Excelas, an education technology company using artificial intelligence to support teachers at scale. She is also the founder of Coffee, Croffles and Careers, a community focused on honesty, visibility, and agency for early career professionals navigating modern work.
When the Work Stops Being About Permission
Phoebe Ng did not begin her career with a desire to stand out. Like many ambitious young professionals, she started with a quieter goal: to belong. The early years were shaped by movement across countries, institutions, and expectations. From Malaysia to the United Kingdom, from lecture halls to boardrooms, her life followed what looked like a sensible progression. Study hard. Secure the role. Learn the rules. Fit the shape that already exists.
But somewhere between academic rigor and corporate scale, something began to feel incomplete. The work was impressive. The environments were prestigious. Yet the sense of authorship was missing. The further she went, the clearer it became that she was not interested in performing success. She wanted to understand how systems worked, why people behaved the way they did, and how technology could serve human needs rather than intimidate them.
That curiosity would become the foundation of a career defined not by titles, but by translation.
Learning the Language of People Before the Language of Power
Phoebe’s early academic path followed economics, first at the University of Essex and later at the London School of Economics. At the time, the discipline appealed to her because it promised structure. Models. Predictability. A way to explain outcomes through logic and data.
Then she encountered behavioral economics, and the theory cracked open.
What fascinated her was not the math, but the admission that humans are rarely rational. Decisions are shaped by fear, bias, context, and emotion. That insight reframed everything. It explained why the clean logic of spreadsheets often failed in real life. It also planted a question that would follow her into every role after: if people are messy, why do we keep building systems that expect them not to be?
Alongside academia, Phoebe spent time at Samsung during her placement year. It was a lesson in scale and execution. Processes were refined. Expectations were clear. Results mattered. She learned discipline, coordination, and how large systems move without collapsing under their own weight.
But she also learned something else. Large systems move slowly. And individual voices, especially those that do not match a familiar profile, can disappear inside them.
She did not want to spend her career waiting for permission to matter.
Choosing the Messy Middle
The shift came when Phoebe stepped into the startup world, particularly in education technology. It was not a glamorous move. The environments were under resourced and constantly changing. Roles were undefined. Outcomes were uncertain.
It was exactly what she needed.
At Excelas, she found herself working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, education, and human behavior. Her role evolved quickly from marketing execution into something harder to label. She became responsible not only for growth strategy, but for interpretation. Translating complex systems into language that teachers could trust. Turning raw capability into something that felt safe, useful, and respectful of the classroom.
She describes her work as technical translation, sitting between code and human need.
“Marketing, when done right, is just applied behavioral science,” she says. “It is about taking something complex and making it feel accessible without stripping away its integrity.”
That philosophy guided the building of Excelas’s go to market foundation from scratch. Within months, the company saw significant growth in visibility and adoption. But the metric that mattered most to her was not clicks or rankings. It was time.
The platform has now supported the marking of over one hundred thousand student questions. Behind that number are teachers who gained back evenings, weekends, and mental space. For Phoebe, that is impact. Not optimization for its own sake, but relief where it counts.
Finding Her Voice by Telling the Truth
While her professional role was expanding, another part of Phoebe’s life was quietly taking shape. Early in her career, she felt overwhelmed by the gap between how work was presented online and how it actually felt. LinkedIn was filled with announcements and success stories. Her own experience was rejection, anxiety, and uncertainty.
Instead of retreating, she started documenting the reality. Coffee, Croffles and Careers began as a personal project, a place to talk openly about the parts of ambition that rarely make it into public narratives. Burnout. Visa anxiety. Imposter syndrome. The feeling of being capable but unseen.
What surprised her was how quickly others responded. The community grew not because it promised answers, but because it offered honesty. People did not want perfection. They wanted recognition.
This public turning point reshaped her leadership style. Vulnerability was not a weakness. It was connective tissue. It taught her that credibility does not come from polish, but from consistency and care.
Around the same time, a quieter moment reinforced the lesson. Phoebe turned down a role that looked ideal on paper. Higher status. Recognizable brand. Clear progression. But the culture signaled that success would require self erasure. Declining that offer marked a shift in identity. She was no longer waiting to be chosen. She was choosing.
Making Space for a Hybrid Identity
One of the most persistent challenges Phoebe faced was learning how to hold all parts of herself without apology. Immigrant. Young leader. Woman in technology. Neurodivergent thinker. For years, she treated these traits as risks to be managed.
She tried to simplify her story. To appear more linear. To mute the parts that did not fit a conventional mold.
Eventually, she stopped negotiating against herself.
By paying attention to outcomes rather than assumptions, she noticed that her non linear thinking allowed her to spot behavioral patterns others missed. Her experience as an outsider made her sensitive to users who felt intimidated by new tools. What once felt like friction turned out to be leverage.
She reframed her role not as a marketer performing visibility, but as a strategic architect shaping understanding. In fast moving environments, clarity is power. Translation becomes leadership.
The decision to stop masking did not remove difficulty, but it removed friction. Energy once spent on fitting in could now be directed toward building things that worked.
Ethics as a Growth Strategy
At the core of Phoebe’s work is a belief that technology should reduce anxiety, not create it. In an industry racing toward automation, she advocates for restraint, context, and care. Code without explanation is noise. Growth without trust is fragile.
Her approach to marketing is grounded in ethical translation. Educating users rather than overwhelming them. Designing narratives that respect intelligence and lived experience. Making sure innovation serves people rather than asking people to adapt endlessly to innovation.
This philosophy extends beyond Excelas. Through her community work, mentoring, and public writing, she focuses on lifting others while moving forward herself. Visibility is not about attention. It is about leaving doors open.
She is proud not of a single achievement, but of agency. From petitioning to change her degree title early in her academic life to building a role that did not exist before, her career has been shaped by deliberate authorship.
“I realized I did not have to shrink myself to fit a job description,” she reflects. “I could expand the description to fit who I actually am.”
Redefining What Success Feels Like
Phoebe’s definition of success has evolved away from external validation. Titles, salaries, and sponsorship once felt urgent. Today, they are secondary to autonomy and integrity.
Success now means the ability to say no without fear. To do high impact work without sacrificing mental health. To remain visible without performing a version of herself that feels false.
She does not chase balance. She aims for rhythm. As someone with attention differences, she works in cycles of intensity and rest. Creative outlets like writing, painting, and music are not hobbies on the side. They are essential counterweights that preserve perspective.
Her identity is not limited to her role. She is building a life alongside a career, not beneath it.
Looking Ahead Without Losing Ground
Phoebe is building toward multiple futures at once. Professionally, she wants to continue proving that human first growth is not a soft idea, but a sustainable strategy for artificial intelligence. Creatively, she is committed to publishing her novel, carrying forward a writing practice that has lived with her since adolescence. In community, she envisions Coffee, Croffles and Careers growing into a wider movement for unseen builders.
She does not look to traditional icons for inspiration. Her role models are people who show up without applause. Family members. Workers. Caregivers. Individuals whose success is measured by consistency and responsibility rather than recognition.
That grounding keeps her work honest. Ambition, in her view, does not require self abandonment.
The Quiet Authority of Being Real
Phoebe Ng’s career is not a story of rapid ascent or dramatic reinvention. It is a story of steady authorship. Of learning when to listen and when to speak. Of recognizing that translation is not a secondary skill, but a form of leadership.
Her work reminds us that the most meaningful impact often happens quietly. In the moments where clarity replaces confusion. Where time is returned. Where someone feels seen instead of processed.
“You are not a template,” she says. “The things you are trying to hide are often the very things that make you effective.”
In an industry obsessed with speed and spectacle, Phoebe is building something slower and stronger. A career rooted in understanding. A leadership style grounded in truth. And a future that leaves room for others to step forward without pretending they are someone else.
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